As a person who actually enjoys 100 degree days, I tend to visit the Utah desert mostly in summer. But Nicolai and I are ready to try something new- we are planning a trip to Utah in early November, something I haven’t done in a long time. The days will be shorter, and the nights colder. But the stars will still be in the sky, tracks will still be on the ground, and the canyons will still be waiting for us. And to paraphrase that rather common fishing bumper sticker, “any day exploring the desert is better than a day….” You can fill the rest in.

An interesting petroglyph along the San Juan River. I have adjusted the contrast a bit to make it clearer. The actual patina is much lighter and the glyph is covered by a light coating of sand carried by water running down the wall from high above.

Our plan is to head over the mountains on about the 7th of November and spend 10 or 12 days exploring. We will start in the Bluff area and continue walking the canyons of Comb Ridge, and investigating some of the new canyons we “discovered” on a recent trip. On the edge of one of those canyons we found a tremendous flake scatter, along with some incredible potsherds in many different styles. This will be our starting point for our exploration, with the goal of finding out if there are any other occupation areas in the canyon. If the weather allows we may do an overnight or two in the canyon. Otherwise there will be lots of day hikes and plenty of fires at the truck. We had hoped to fit in a visit to Kayenta, and then Navajo National Monument with a hike out to Keet Seel. But the park closes for hiking from early September through late May. So we’ll save that hike for next summer. Read more about Navajo National Monument, their season, and hiking there on the NPS website.

Beautiful potsherds at a site we have recently “discovered”. The styles there were incredibly diverse.

I am also looking forward to finding some tracks- any tracks- and following them. Tracking is something that I find relaxing, challenging, soothing, and exciting at the same time. It is a primal urge that still lives in all of us, and for me it is important to let it out. And as I have noted in many past blogs, I feel it is an incredibly important skill for Nicolai to learn, for many reasons. We will take along a few of our tracking guides to study, being sure to re-read parts of them before we start out. Since we don’t have a teacher or mentor and are primarily using books to learn from, it is important for us to revisit them as often as possible to make sure we haven’t forgotten too much. We have posted a list of all the tracking books we have in our library on the Desert Explorer website Tracking Pages, and continue to add to it as we find more titles.

A tracking book that we hope to add to the list soon, one I have been trying to find for years is The Art of Tracking: The Origin of Science by Louis Liebenberg. The link takes you to a free download of the book, which will be available in print in the very near future, by the end of October 2013 according to various internet sources. I will be ordering a printed copy if the rumor is true. Be sure to click through to the home page if you visit Liebenberg’s website- the site is quite interesting and there is a lot to it.

Anyone wishing to can follow our trip at our website, DesertExplorer.us– see the Twitter posts at the bottom of the page. These are automated and posted as we check in with our SPOT Messenger. We usually do a check in each night at camp, and also when we find a ruin or rock art panel.